Transcription
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She emerged from within me like a goddess from water. She filled her lungs with new air, with a sigh that meant everything: relief, rebirth, release. She took in the world around her with an understanding of its fragility and its strength. She let the waters of her past run down her face. She took on a new name. She took on a new way. She became old. She lives in me. She saved me. She is me.
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Hello gorgeous goddesses! So excited to see you today. After our last module, where you have most likely encountered your goddess, I think I saw in the comment section that some of you, the two of you, are in person together somewhere in the world. So I love that! Right now, that's very fun.
So today, we're going to have a very important conversation between the difference of forgiveness versus processing emotions. And how we really don't know the difference between those two things in the early stages of our emotional intelligence. And a lot of people move through their lives never really understanding the difference between me processing my feelings and me forgiving you. Two very different things.
So when we look at the goddess, so for those of you who have this experience, you'll be able to share it in the comment section so that people who had a different experience are able to see. But for those of you where when you said to your goddess, "I'm so sorry," and there was literally zero residual anger, like none. You just immediately were forgiven. Who, who had that experience? It was almost odd for you to say like, "I know, it's okay, don't worry about it, I love you." Like, immediate love, so fast.
This is such a powerful piece of the exercise, whether you experienced it or whether you can see how many women experienced it here. Because foundationally, the goddess forgives. The goddess forgives because forgiveness does not mean my feelings are processed. Forgiveness doesn't mean you made me feel better with your apology. Forgiveness means I release you from the pain you're feeling because of what you did. So different. You can forgive a person and still feel pain. You can say, "I completely forgive you. I've got some pain around it still, and I'll work on that. But please know, I entirely forgive you." And I, I know you did your best. And you could mean that.
But that's not how we're taught forgiveness. We're taught forgiveness like we're supposed to make someone feel better with the forgiveness. So two small children are playing with a toy. One child smacks the other child with the toy. Parents come in and say, "Say you're sorry. Look, you made her cry. Look, say you're sorry. Sorry, you feel better now? No? Do you feel better now? Okay, everybody make peace and now we're going to continue to play." No time for processing emotions and no ownership of the emotions or the feelings to the child that got hurt. All the responsibility on the child that did hurt it. "It's your fault, so you need to apologize, and your apology should make the other child feel better, and now we move on."
And so we have these expectations as grown-ups that apologies are meant to make us feel better. That's not what apologies are for. Apologies rarely make you feel better. But the person doesn't apologize, it can make you feel worse. So this also is complex because there's times where you maybe have heard this with partners in your life, or your mother, or siblings, like, "What do you want from me? Like, how much more? How many more times do I need to say I'm sorry?" Have you ever heard that before? It starts to feel like, "What's the point of apologizing because it doesn't do anything for you?"
So this comes from immaturity on both sides. I think my apology should fix you, which is my immaturity. But also, you expect my apology to forgive you, or to to fix you, which is your immaturity. When we experience that we are the one that hurts someone, we know what the apology means. And somehow, when we're the one receiving the apology, we entirely forget.
So have you ever unwillingly, it was not your intention, really hurt somebody? Either with something you said, either by not showing up, either by misunderstanding them, either by choosing to do something that you hadn't considered might hurt their feelings? Have you ever hurt somebody? The feeling you feel inside when you say, "I'm sorry," is there any part of that where it's like, "Oh, I will say I'm sorry so that I fix this"? Is that how you feel when you say, "I'm sorry"? Or is it like trying with every fiber of yourself to express that you care about the person and wanting them to know that and hoping that that's enough for them to be able to say, "I forgive you"? And sometimes it's both. Sometimes you've done some, sometimes you've done the others. You know the difference in your body. One is, "I'll say I'm sorry and hopefully we'll we'll fix it." And the other one is like, "I am so sorry, and I just, I don't know what to do. I can't fix it. I can just apologize. And I, I need to try to apologize as much as I can, but I can't fix it. And I wish I could fix it because, oh my gosh, it's like..."
So when we receive apologies, we're usually measuring the apology. Does this feel like the kind of apology that I give when I'm just trying to fix things? Or does this feel like the apology that I give when I'm really sorry? And based on what we think it's should look like, we decide whether the other person means it or not. Have you ever had someone decide you didn't mean an apology that you really meant? Like you meant it with all of your heart, and they were like, "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Or they wouldn't let, you could tell it wasn't landing, even though you really meant it. Did that ever happen to you?
So isn't it odd that it happens to us? That our apologies are misunderstood or not taken? And that we feel so paralyzed when that happens? So sad. But also, sometimes a little unsafe in the relationship. It's like, "If you're not going to believe me when I tell you that I'm sorry, then I don't know." I feel like powerless in our relationship. You, if you have to believe me, you have to be able to tell what I'm being honest, or else what, what relationship do we have?
What it's on the other side, we're a lot tougher with the apologies. If there's a fraction of a millimeter or possibility of a chance that they didn't mean it, we're not taking that chance. We don't want to look silly. We don't want them to think that they can just say sorry just like that and brush it under the rug. We want the real apology.
Now, we have been trained, a lot of us, to want an apology to come from pain. And this is where there is a difference between where the goddess is and where the badass or the boss are in your emotional system. So when you think of the badass, the badass is busy. The badass has a lot of things on her plate. When she's apologizing, she's apologizing like, "Okay, we don't have time for this. We got a lot on our plate. Let's go. I'm sorry. Can we move on, please? Please, can we just get over it? How long are we going to talk about this? I'm sorry. I've said I'm sorry." This is the badass.
The boss is more transactional. The boss is more like, "Let's look at all the receipts. Let's see the last time that you tried to apologize to me, and let's see the last time I tried to apologize to you. And let's see the gravity of the thing that you actually did, and whether or not this apology measures up in my books, or if it feels like a deficit. Don't think you're doing a very good job here. Based on my calculations, you owe me another apology." The boss is very result-oriented.
But the goddess, the goddess is all about her own experience. And so it's like, "If I'm okay, why do I need to punish you? If I'm fine in my heart, yeah, I'm sad, I'm disappointed, I'm upset. Why do I need you to feel pain? Why do I need you to feel not important? Why do I need to use this situation to make me feel powerful?"
So when we really go deep into the triggers and the behavior that causes people to not accept an apology, a lot of it is not willing to give up the upper hand. So if you are really honest with yourself, you will see that when someone is apologizing to you, you do feel a certain kind of power in that moment. You're the one that's being run after. You're the one that's being, "Please forgive me." You're the one who gets to decide if they're forgiven or not. You maybe feel seen. You're being acknowledged for the mistake they made. And you might want to hold on to that a little longer. Maybe they see it, but they could see it more. "They really are afraid of losing you. And what would happen if they were just a little bit more afraid? They feel a regret. But imagine if they also felt just a little bit of guilt and shame. What if you could just make it just a little bit more apparent that that was not correct?"
Now, this happens when you don't have a healthy level of self-validation. Meaning, I don't need them to feel bad for me to feel good. I don't need them to feel ashamed for me to know that they were wrong. I don't need them to fear losing me for me to know there's a very real chance they could lose me. I don't need to to to create that in their body. I, I know it that it's true whether they are aware that they could lose me or not. If I'm aware of it, that's all that matters. Instead of, "Maybe they don't know that they could lose me. Maybe I need to be a little bit tougher with this so that they really understand."
A lot of it comes from controlling the situation, which is not the goddess whatsoever. The goddess doesn't need to control a situation because the goddess wants to be in relationship with people. And if ever she felt like the person or people were not ready to be in relationship with her, she would let them go for now. The goddess doesn't even need to do permanent separation unless it's with obviously people who have some sort of, you know, people who are abusive or have an addiction in the moment where they're not taking care of it. And the goddess would completely step away.
But when what we're talking about here is like, you know, "You said something really mean to me." The goddess gets to say, "Yeah, I see that you're sorry, and I do forgive you. I don't want to be with you right now. I don't want to be with you anymore, but I completely forgive you. And I'm not holding a grudge." And that's it. Like, we're just, I don't, I don't, I don't feel the same way about you now, but I forgive you 100%. You're free. I won't talk about you badly. I won't drag you through the mud. I won't, won't need to tell everyone how I was right and you were wrong. I won't remember you in a bad light forever. I'm, but I will be letting you go. That's the goddess.
Or, "I love you. I care about you. I know that you're sorry. I'm sure that we'll be fine. But in this moment right now, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to to to go back to everything is okay because it's not yet okay in my body. I need to process my feelings. I forgive you, but I still need to process my feelings. Your apology doesn't process my feelings for me. So let me take care of my feelings, and I will be back. You know, I'll, I'll call you later. Let's talk tomorrow." All the things we don't want to say when we've got the upper hand. "I'd rather not answer your texts, make you wonder, make you stressed, make you realize what you did was wrong." Those are all very, what I call in the program, baby goddess behaviors.
Now, the thing is, when we behave this way, we then fear that other people are going to behave this way. And it makes us less confident in our relationships, and it makes us less confident in ourselves. Because most of the time, as women, what makes us wobbly in our identity is the fear we're going to mess something up. The fear we're going to break a relationship. Or really, just the fear we're going to get in trouble. And what perpetuates this fear, "We're going to get in trouble," is that we still put people to trouble. We punish people. We say, "Ah, you're in trouble. You were not nice to me, so you're in trouble. Oh, I'm real mad. I'm not going to talk to you for a long time, and I'm going to tell all my friends everything you did, even a little worse than you actually did it." And it's going to feel really good. And then when we mess up, we're like, "Oh no, no. I know what could happen to me because I know what I do."
But when we change our behavior, the crazy thing is, it actually rewires our mind as well. We, when we, when something happens to us and we're upset, and we say, "You know what? I know you didn't mean to hurt me. You're a beautiful person. You have a lot on your mind. I totally get it. It did hurt. I'm going to take some time for myself to just get my feelings right, but we will be fine, and it's all going to be okay. I love you and thank you for the apology." Then when we mess up, we can feel sad without feeling scared. We can feel sorry without feeling worried that we're just going to lose the friendship. We get to actually feel the real feelings that we're supposed to feel in life. "I feel so sad that I hurt your feelings," instead of, "I'm terrified you're not going to be my friend anymore." You know, "I feel so angry with myself that I lost my temper," instead of, "I feel so ashamed and I feel like you're going to tell everybody."
We would actually feel our real feelings for people if we didn't perpetuate this constant battle, which is the punishment battle. Because then, instead of actually feeling what I feel, I feel the fear of what you're going to put me through. Which is so different. "I don't want to be in trouble." Is so different than "I don't want to hurt you." And for us to have a world where apologies matter, someone needs to change the way that apologies are made. "I'm sorry, please don't be mad at me" is so different than "I'm sorry. Take all the time you need."
But we're all trying to protect ourselves. And that's why most of the time, this is one of our biggest blocks. You will find deep inside, there's something you haven't forgiven your parents for. Something that happened to you, they didn't, they didn't show up for you properly, they didn't stand up for you properly, they didn't protect you properly. Something that happened with a friend. They knew your heart, they knew your fragilities, they knew your pains, and they still decided to behave a certain way and hurt you or break something. An ex who you knew their, you knew or they knew you, they knew what you'd been through, you knew their, they knew your history with your parents or with your friend, they still did the thing, even though it had happened to you before, they knew, they still did it. It's so, it feels so hard to, it feels so hard to forgive when you, they knew. Like, how do you forgive that?
So I want to ask you, who here has, who has kids in this room? Kids in this room? Have you ever lost your temper in a way where you felt really bad about losing your temper, and you may have said to yourself, like, "I am never doing that again. Like, that, I don't know what took over me. I don't know what happened, but I'm never doing that again." How many of you did it again?
So the thing is, losing your temper, not being nice, not saying the right thing, making the same mistake twice, none of those things have anything to do with being a good person. None of those things have anything to do about loving people. None of those things have anything to do with any of it. It's our emotional intelligence. All of it. And so what we're always up against is not whether a person cares about us or not. It's not whether they're a good person or not. It's what their level of emotional intelligence is, how strong their nervous system is, how capable they are of facing themselves and their fears.
So if you think to yourself, if you could like picture in your mind's eye, the person that you have the most difficulty forgiving, whether it's your mother that snaps at you on the phone or always has a comment, or whether it's like your sister-in-law that has a very different way of seeing the views of the world from you and she makes you feel a certain way, or it's your sister, or a friend, or your kids, like yourself, whoever. I want you to think of the person who triggers you the most, the most often, or the one that you could, that comes up the fastest, even if it was like the woman on the highway that cut you off and then flipped you off. Somehow, like, how that happened.
So I want you to think to yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10, how emotionally intelligent, self-aware, and personally empowered would you rate those people? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being they are the most amazing, self-empowered, self-led, emotionally intelligent people on the planet. Zero being not so. These numbers are kind of low. Now, in the moment where these people are bugging you the most, is it fair to say that they're bugged? Something is happening for them in the moment where they're upset or frustrated or hurt or sad, or they don't feel important, or they don't feel something? Like they're going through something. And when you are not very emotional intelligent, when your emotional intelligence is low, the pains, the triggers, the hurts, they tend to feel higher. So if you can remember times in your life where your emotional intelligence was lower, something could happen and it could feel like a level 10 problem instead of feeling like a level one problem. Because of your emotional intelligence, it felt worse.
So if you were to think about these people who've lost it with you, or who really are just driving you bananas, in the moment where they're driving you bananas, are they having an experience that is comfortable in their own body, or are they having an altered experience in their body? Like they're upset about something. So if you can imagine zero being they're not upset at all, 10 being they are real upset, are they zero to 10? Where are they? 11. Okay. 10. 11. 14. 10. Nine.
So let's look at this. You take a person with a level of emotional intelligence zero, and you put them in a level 10 upset. What can we expect? Now, if you want to go into your high and mighty self and say, "I would expect much greater. This is my parent. She should know better." Then I would say, "Remember that one time you yelled at your kid twice after you said you'd never do it again?" We're not perfect. None of us are. And the people we tend to get triggered by are the people that have the most impact on us in a moment where we are low in our emotional intelligence and high in our level of anger or anguish.
So you're not necessarily forgiving them like, "I forgive you. You didn't do it on purpose." It's not even that. It's like, "I forgive you because you didn't have access to another way in that moment." Your kid couldn't say to you, "I forgive you for yelling at me, Mom. It's not your fault." But your kid could say, "I forgive you for yelling at me, Mom. I realize that you didn't have the strength to not yell at me in that moment." And how would it feel if your child said that to you? "I forgive you for yelling at me because I realize you didn't have the strength not to yell at me in that moment." How would that feel? Like if your child said that to you? What would the feeling be? You'd feel like you're the child. You'd feel so much better. How did you feel? Gratitude. And this belief of their maturity. Compassion. Taught a lesson. "I feel grateful." Tammy's just had a huge forgiveness epiphany. "I would cry." "I would feel like they have more emotional control than I do."
Can you imagine if you just said that to the people that you just don't want to forgive because you're afraid that they're not going to get it? We're not forgiving people because they're good or bad. We're forgiving people because they have a level of capacity, and that's all they've got. Where the compassion comes from, it comes from also saying like, "I'm so grateful that I'm developing my emotional intelligence to the point where I would be able to not do that." Or, "I'm grateful I'm being shown this so that I can work on my capacity because I feel like I could have had a very similar reaction, given a level 10 upset, in one of my worst moments. I can actually see I would have reacted the same way."
But what do we do? We want to feel empowered. We use these opportunities to take the upper hand. We want to say, "You'll never guess who lost her [expletive]. She just lost it. She was nuts. She was crazy. Like, who reacts like that? I'm, I don't think I'm ever talking to her again. She just showed me her true colors. I am so done." You talk about it and you think about it. And then you might have a group of people. A lot of you here are entrepreneurs. Sometimes you have a group of haters on the internet make you not want to show up anymore. You hate them. You're mad at them. You wish they'd go away. You want to say stuff about them. Most of your life is about thinking about them and how you can get back at them or avoid them, or how you're stronger than them, or more capable than them. Or this piece of the puzzle for the goddess is actually the biggest: your ability to move through life not taking everything personally and not taking it as an opportunity to be empowered because you don't need it. You're so empowered in your life that you don't need circumstantial power.
What is circumstantial power? I feel so strong in my life that I don't need to hang on to a fight just to get "I'm sorry" for a few more hours to feel like I'm in charge. I don't need that. I can say, "I forgive you. I want to understand in my body the difference between 'I have feelings to process' and 'I forgive you'."
Now, let's say you're in a relationship with a partner, and you say something really mean, and you say, "I'm so sorry, please forgive me." And the partner says, "Yeah, yeah, you're sorry. You're always sorry." Leaves the room, slams the door, and leaves the house. How are you left feeling in your body? How do you feel about the relationship? How's your nervous system? How much trust do you have in your partner that you can still be loved? How do you feel now?
What if you have a fight with a partner, and your partner says, "I forgive you. I forgive you. I just don't know. I don't know how to continue this way. I love you. I, I know you love me. I just don't think I can handle feeling like this. I'm going to go for a walk. I'm going to go process my feelings. Anything to think I'm going to come back. I'll be back in an hour." Now, how do you feel? You feel calm. Good. Like, "I want to be better."
What's the difference? What is the difference between saying, "Yeah, yeah, you're always sorry," and slamming the door, or saying, "I know you're sorry. I know you are. And I love you. I just don't know how I'm going to process all of this after this. Like, I, I, I'm going to go for a walk. Let me just clear my feelings. I'll be back in an hour." What's the difference? If they love you either way, if they're going to come back either way, what's the difference? One is just to show you that you were wrong. One is just to show you that you misbehaved. One is just to scare you. One is just so that you feel guilty. One is just so you never do it again. Does it work?
When we think about the long-term goal for our relationship, is that the memories we have in our mind, we're proud of them. That we've made it through hard times, and we've made it through hard times with love and kindness and respect for each other. Like we made it through. We faced the tough stuff. And I could be so mad with you, but you never questioned whether or not I loved you. And you did things that were really difficult, but you still had space to be human with me. Instead of just, "You're one inch away from being kicked out. I'm a millimeter off from leaving."
And the difference, honestly, the difference is the level of intelligence, emotional intelligence, and and maturity of the person who's punishing. Because I don't want you to think you can do this again, and I want you to be really sorry, guilty, shameful, all these things. And that gives me a feeling of power that I don't normally have in my life. And so I'm going to take this opportunity to use it on you.
When you said to your goddess, "I'm sorry for all the times I didn't listen to you," she could have said, "Do you realize how much pain you've caused us?" Just want you to be aware. It didn't even come through your subconscious for the goddess to say that. And in the sheer volume, the sheer volume of this group, like, and this, this is all this is quite magical. Even though a lot of times the goddess doesn't come back, she always forgives. That's the crazy thing. 99.9% of the time, the goddess will forgive. And if the goddess doesn't forgive, it's because there's something inside of you you're holding a grudge on. And it's like, "How can I forgive myself if I won't forgive blank?" And so through this program, I hope you can achieve more forgiveness.
So I just want to see what's going on in the chat section here for a moment. Um, what about colleagues in business that you don't get along with at all? So the fact is, getting along with someone is not the same as being in a relationship with someone. So where this matters the most right now is in the relationships that you have. When you don't care about someone, it's easy to just not care. But when it's someone that you do care about, like you have said things about your own mother, you've said things about your best friend, your sister, your kids. You've lost your temper about people you love more than anyone in the whole world. You've lost it. And so forgiveness around yourself and your imperfections, although you do love with all of your heart, and forgiveness to the people that you love the most, is the first step. Because you can only extend to a stranger as far as you can extend to yourself or the people that you love the most.
I would love your take on forgiveness when they aren't sorry, they don't apologize, they hurt you, and they vilify you. So the way I see this is that if I look at a person that hurt me and vilifies me, what is their level of emotional intelligence on a scale of 1 to 10? And how much are they hurting? If they felt like they needed to hurt me back and still make me a villain on top of that, it's not even enough to hurt me back, they also have to make me the villain. On a scale of 1 to 10, what are they going through emotionally? So what do I expect? I forgive them because they don't have better tools. I don't forgive them because what they did is okay. I'm not the one to decide who deserves forgiveness. That was not my job. That's God's job. That's Mother Nature, God, the universe's job. I was not put here to decide who deserves forgiveness. It's not about me to decide who deserves forgiveness.
So it's like, "I forgive them for not having the tools." Because if they had higher emotional intelligence, and if their anger didn't make them become hurtful and in need of a villain, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. And who taught them to behave like that? Probably their mom. Probably their parents, their grandparents, their, their life, their community, the things that they went through in their life, all of their beliefs about the world. And how's that their fault? So I forgive them for all of that. Because what's the alternative? I hate them. I think they're wrong. I think they're bad. I think they're evil. I don't forgive them. I feel mad in my body. My emotional intelligence drops. My level of anguish in my body rises. And next thing you know, I'm primed to take it out on someone I love next. The more I hold on to being frustrated with people, the more frustrated I am, the closer I am to blow when something happens to me and I'm the perpetrator in someone else's narrative. I'm the bad guy.
Forgiveness is totally different than boundaries. You can literally say to someone, "I completely forgive you. I don't want you to hold onto this for the rest of your life. I forgive you. But I realize I don't think we're a match. I don't think we're the right, like, I don't process emotions that this way, and you, we're, we're not compatible. I feel like I, I make you really angry, and the way that you react, it's not good for me. I forgive you. I, I forgive you. I love you. I will never forget all the good times that we've had. But I, I don't think it's healthy for us to continue having a relationship." That's a boundary. Instead of, "You want to know something? We're done, and it's all your fault. And if you don't want to be alone for the rest of your life, you might want to check your attitude." One is, "I want to punish you. I want to hurt you. And I want you to know that you're wrong." The other one is, "You're not wrong, but you're not right for me."
We could let people go like that. Can you imagine? Imagine how divorces would go, how co-parenting would go, if you were able to say, "You know, I forgive you for not having the ability to stay loyal and faithful. I, I don't know what it would be like for me to not have that self-control. I don't know what it would be like for me to not feel like I can have a handle over my self, my emotions." Like, "I forgive you, but I can't be with you anymore. And it's going to take me a while to process my emotions around this because I am so hurt. I am so sad. But I can tell that you're entirely heartbroken about this, and I can tell that you're hurting. And this is going to hurt you for a long time. Like, the marriage is broken. I can tell that you're freaking out about that. And I'm so sorry you're freaking out about that. You don't deserve to be in pain. I forgive you, but I can't be married to you anymore."
If we can make it to that, if we, these are Jesus walks on water conversations. I have these with my clients sometimes. What a Jesus walks on water conversation is, is no one on earth expects you to ever react this way. No one has the emotional range to react this way. This is Jesus walking on water. But you could contemplate it and be like, "Whoa, imagine if I could get to that." And the thing is, it's not the high road because then you're imagining that there's a low road. It's the forgiveness road. You know, I remember people, my grandmother telling me that you've got to take the higher road. But that always meant, what it felt like for me, is that I had to be responsible when other people didn't.
What I love with this is it's like, "Do you know the kind of life they live when they don't forgive? How they feel in their body? How their heart feels? How their mind feels? How they sleep? How they eat? How they think? How they breathe? In comparison to how I do." I spend my entire days building my dream, surrounded by people that I love, celebrating, loving, gratitude, all the day, all the days of my life. And all the minutes of my day, at 99% of the time, I'm just in gratitude and in forgiveness and in strength. I'm so grateful. I can't imagine what it feels like to be paralyzed by my anger. I remember what it feels like to be unable to forgive, so caught up in my my anger that I can't feel joy even for the beautiful things. So vindictive that I, I can't be happy for anything. Constantly consumed by my thoughts. I live a far greater life. It's not about a high road or a low road. It's about your quality of life when you let it go. Not for them. Not like, "Okay, I'm a nice person." It's not even that. It's like, "I clear my nervous system."
It's not my job to to decide whether they're deserving of forgiveness. I forgive because I'm deserving of freedom. They might never forgive themselves for what they did. That's the thing. You also have to remember. Like, you have a partner who, or a best friend, that loses her cool with you and says things she can never take back. And you say, "I will never forget the good times we have. We had. I will, I will always love you. You're, I'll never forget the beautiful memories. But I will not put myself in a situation again where you could yell at me that way. If you're not capable of handling your feelings when you're mad, I just can't be in a friendship like that. It's not good for me. But I love you. I'm going to miss you. I'm sad that we're not going to be friends anymore. And I forgive you. I just can't put myself in it where it could happen again. You understand?" You forgive them, you move on, you process your feelings, and they still have to forgive themselves. And you don't know whether they can do that or not. Most people can't.
So it's not like you forgive them, everything goes away. They still have to be able to forgive themselves. But most of the time, if you freak out, they don't need to forgive. They don't care about your forgiveness. They can just hate you instead. It's so much easier. When you tell her, "You're crazy. I don't want to be friends with you. I hate you." They say, "Good riddance." Nothing to process on their part. Nothing to forgive on their part. They just get to put you as the villain, and that's it. So let people process their own stuff. Stop thinking you're the one who's the be-all and end-all. And the way that you forgive or not, you don't make everything right with the forgiveness, and you don't make everything wrong with the forgiveness. You, you process your feelings, you set them free so that you don't have ties with them anymore, and then you process your feelings.
Because this is the, the big point of all this is that we get a hundred years on this planet, if we're lucky. How much time have you spent mad in your life? If you really think about it, in a whole day, like how many hours have you spent on the phone with another friend talking about what another friend did, or talking about an ex, crying over an ex, hating the new girlfriend of an ex, stalking someone on the internet that did something not nice or said something not nice, fighting with a stranger on the internet, telling someone about one of your fights with a stranger on the internet, talking about someone who did you wrong, talking about something. How many hours of your life do you think you've already given? Like, we spend about half of our life sleeping. Let's say a third of our life sleeping. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it past us to put the other half, other third of it, angry, worried, sad, upset, worried it's going to happen again, not knowing if we should forgive, not trusting because of last time, not loving because of last time, holding on to the past. And it's stopping the future. A third of our life. And then we say, we say, "I don't have time to start the business." Well, no, you've been complaining about your ex-boyfriend all morning. "I don't have time. I don't have the energy. I've just been fighting with my mom all afternoon. I've just been on the phone with my sister about how my dad said a thing." Like, when you stop doing this, you start to get time back. A lot of time back.
Your examples are so beautifully said. I'd love to have you on speed dial when these moments happen. The more you contemplate these things, the more it'll become second nature for you as well. My husband wanted to just hug it out after a fight today, which I always love. But I also said, "What did you want to get, or what did you want me to get about you that I didn't?" And this is what I need you to get about me. And it was amazing. And see, that's not a fight. Because you could have said, "You don't get me," or "You don't, you know, how we will just assume you just want this because this, you don't get me." You just want, instead of, "I don't actually feel complete in this. I know you want to hug it out, and I also want to hug it out, actually. But I don't feel, I don't feel fully complete. I just want to know like, what do you get, or what do I get?" Like a conversation with no angle to get them to fail or fall. And still, if they fail, to just be like, "Okay, well, look, I forgive you. I'm still mad, but I know you didn't do it on purpose, and I know that you didn't want to hurt me, and I, I totally forgive you, and I love you, and you're my husband, and I'm going to love you for the rest of my life. So let me just process this. I'll have a long bubble bath and a cry, and then we can talk about what we're having for lunch." Imagine what kind of relationship you might have if you can just process your feelings.
I find it challenging in co-parenting when this arises with someone you have to keep communicating with and parenting with, and kids are involved. Definitely teaching me the most lessons in my life. So again, here's the thing. When you're co-parenting with someone, it's most likely because you've ended the relationship, right? If you ended the relationship, it's because there were things about the person that could not be for a long-term love partner, love match in your life, couldn't be. So you had to break the relationship. How could it be? In what universe does it happen that the minute you stop being with them, they suddenly become everything you wish they were when you were together? Like, why, why would that happen? You're not together for a reason.
So there is a part of you that has to accept all the things about the person that you've decided not to be with. You've got to say, "I'm so grateful I'm not with this person anymore, and that I only need to deal with them when it's stuff about the kids. And I'm so grateful that my kids love them. And I'm so grateful that I did end up with them for however long I did, or else I wouldn't have these kids." So I forgive them for being everything they are that's not compatible with me. I'm grateful I had the courage to leave, or they had the courage to leave. I'm grateful that this is the only time we need to be talking, and I want to make this the best it can be because we were going to be in each other's lives for the rest of our lives. So how do I take my part in this? How do I put my grudge down? And how do I co-parent like a freaking goddess? "I'm so grateful to see my kids. I'm happy they're going to have a good time. I hope you're well. I'm well. Clearly, we don't absolutely love spending time together, or we'd still be together. But all things considering, I'm glad we did what we did because these kids are great." Can you have a way of seeing your life that's different than noticing all the things that drive you bananas? Clearly, they drive you bananas, or else you wouldn't not be with them anymore.
Um, how does forgiveness change when dealing with family members with mental health issues? I want to continue building relationships. I don't want the relationship completely, but it can be really tough sometimes. So here's another thing. Forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean, "Okay, now I forgive you. It better be easy forever." It's like, "I love you, and I'm always going to forgive you. I forgive you because you have mental health issues, and you're not fully in charge of how your mind is going. And I'm going to keep you in my life forever. I'm going to love you forever. But I've got some feelings to process because what you just said really hurt my feelings. You know, the way you just yelled at me there was really tough for me. I know it's not your fault. I forgive you. I love you. I know you're doing your best. That was really tough for me. So I'm going to take a break. I'll call you in 2 days." Or because you're not going to cut them out of your life because you love them, and you know they've got mental health issues, you know that. So what's the point in any other thing than that? You think you're going to punish them enough to change? No. You think you're going to rationalize them into not behaving the way they behave? No. So the only thing you can do is remind yourself, "I love you like crazy. I'm not going anywhere. I know you're doing your best. I just need to process how it feels because this sucked for me."
Can you imagine if we talked to each other like this? "I really don't like the way you just blew up on me like that. That really sucked for me. I know you're having a really tough day, and I, I'm so sorry you had a rough day. I love you so much, but I, I'm going to need a second because that really sucked for me." Like, normal, natural. Instead of punishing, "You must not love me. You must not care about me."
This is one of the biggest breakthroughs I've ever had in my life. I am only the main character in my own life. In everybody else's life, I'm just someone in their life. Which means no one ever does anything to me. It only ever happens to me in my life. Like, when you snap at your partner, you're not doing it to them. You're losing your marbles. You're losing your temper. The act him, the act them, the act her, that's their experience of their own life. Being the main character. You lost your temper at them because they're the main character in my life. Everything happens to me. But things only happen to me in my life. In everybody else's life, things are happening to them. This is why you say, "Why, how could you do this to me?" And they'll say, "Do this to you? You did this to me. I didn't do anything to you." "You said this." "I didn't mean that." "But you said it." "Yeah, but that's because I was going through something." "Well, I was going through something." "Well, didn't you, could, don't you remember what I've been going through?" "No, because at the time I was mad with you because you just said that." "Well, I only said that because you said that." "Well, I only said that because you said that." We are only the main character in our own movie. Things are only ever happening to us in our own life.
So your family member with mental health conditions who's struggling to cope had a breakdown, not to you, but you were collateral damage. So why this really changed my life is when I started seeing like, "This isn't happening to me. It's just happening, but I'm having a feeling about it. I'm living it. I'm experiencing it." Even when, and this is so hard, but like, even when there's infidelity, it's like, we always say like, "Okay, the person cheated on me." That's like, actually, I was the least, I was the last person in the.
When that happened, I wasn't there. It wasn't to me. This person was unfaithful to themselves, swayed by something that was going on with somebody else. I was actually not present for that. That's what hurts the most. You didn't think about me. You didn't consider me. And it's my life. You're my partner, you're my person, and you didn't think about me when you did what you did.
But you didn't do it to me. You did it to you. You did it to you and your vow. You did it to you and your honor. You did it to you and your integrity. And I'm collateral damage. And we hate being collateral damage in our own life. We want to make someone else responsible when we are collateral damage in our own life. But this changes the way we live our life. Instead of walking through life with a soft heart, able to understand that people are people, same as we are people, and we are imperfect.
We're constantly trying to use this forgiveness weapon to protect ourselves from having to process our feelings. We don't want to get into deep conversations. We don't want to get into it with our feelings. We don't want to go into a deep apology and get rejected because we don't want to face it with our feelings. We don't want to forgive someone who has it in them to hurt us again because we don't want to put ourselves in that state with those feelings. We don't want to be soft with our forgiveness because if we're not angry, we might forgive, and we don't want to forgive because forgiveness looks like we are okay with what they did. We need to punish them longer because they need to feel the pain that we're feeling.
All of these things are not the goddess. It's either the transactional boss or it's the badass who's like, "Nope, don't have time for you, don't have time for this, don't care." The goddess handles life so differently. So, one of the most beautiful things in this program, something that I often talk about, is like, you've got to give the compassion you pray for. And one of the gifts I want to give you in this program is the realization that you are actually so much stronger than you have been, because you've been operating based on society standards. And society standards say, "That's so normal. Of course you lost it. Of course you got mad. They did that. I would have done that. I would have done worse."
Whereas the goddess is the God's own. It gives you your life back. It gives you your own right to forgive when you want to, even when it's unforgivable, just so you can set yourself free. But beyond that, it gives space in your nervous system because every person you hold angry in your heart, in your body, there's a feeling about that, and there's a cellular memory imprint. So when you hold on to the one ex that cheated, you hold on to the possibility of future boyfriends cheating for the rest of time. When you hold on to the anger of your sister having said that mean thing that one Christmas, you remember you're on pins and needles at Christmas, every Christmas, without realizing it. We hold these things in our body, and it affects our love, our intimacy, our friendships, our pleasure, our ability to receive, our ability to trust, and then in turn, our ability to make money, our ability to be, to receive pleasure. Like, everything gets blocked. The more we hang on to these things, so letting it go actually opens up your life to more. We can't give what we don't have. So the self-compassion is huge for me.
How do we forgive the politicians who are destroying so many things, hurt so many that we love? The fact is, the world is not that simple. There is never just one person doing one thing. There's a whole world that's that's behaving in certain ways. There's it's never just one person. One person can't do it. It takes a whole, a whole bunch of people. And so you're going to be mad at the whole world.
The other part of it is, I've been wrong before. I have thought I was doing the right thing, and I've done the wrong thing before. I've also done the wrong thing out of so much anger for the opposite thing I was doing, that I justified my wrong thing. I've done things where I was so mad that I figured I was allowed to do the wrong thing because the wrong thing I was doing was so wrong, that what they had done was so wrong, that my wrong thing wasn't really so wrong, because really, I was loud because of the wrong thing. And so we forgive not because it's okay. We forgive because do you think those people sat in rooms like this one? Do you think those people had mothers who sat them down and actually talked to them about all the things we're talking about right now? Do you think they were taught everything we were taught? Not at all. They were taught to fight.
You know, most of the politicians we've seen in the last few years are all very old, like, people who've been through stuff, like back when things that were acceptable are not acceptable now at all. They literally generationally incompatible with the way the world has become. So it's more the world we need to look at. And this is why I'm so excited about what women can do, because it's like, instead of looking at what's there and what's the problem, it's saying, "Thank goodness we're learning from this, and we're learning from this fast." Whatever it is that we don't agree with, whatever there is out there that you're like, "I never would have said something like that, behaved that way, I can't believe someone agrees with that, I can't believe someone would have stood for that, I can't believe this." But what are you doing about it? And we have had decades of people not being happy with what's happening while doing nothing. Now we're not happy and we're doing something about it.
But I promise you, what you will do in anger and hate will never ever equate to what you could have done in compassion and leadership. And this is why the goddess is so important, because most of the people who get in power because they're fighting against what they hate, end up acting out of hate and create more chaos anyway. You've got to do what you're doing out of full love, no matter what. So whoever you're mad at, whoever in the world you're mad at, it's because you thought you could have done better. So do better. Whatever anger or hate you have in your heart now is no better than any of the things that you hold against the people you don't like.
And this is the mature, difficult conversation. It's like, when we're little kids, we're taught this way. But as grownups, at what point do we say, "Then if I don't like what's out there, let me go do better"? And it starts with how I treat my kids, and it starts with how I treat my home, and it starts how I treat myself, it starts how I treat my friends. It's how I treat people in conflict. Like, I can't even handle my feelings on the phone with my sister, and I want to be mad about how someone is handling a political decision. Like, let's let's get, let's raise the bar, and then we'll raise the bar everywhere. And I feel like if the whole world were doing that, and if they had been doing that for a very long time, we would live in a totally different world today. But it's always trying to do better than who did what before. And then it's like, in a fight against, instead of a fight for. Like, what are we actually standing for?
So the goddess forgives not because whatever anybody else is doing is right. You're not saying, "I forgive you," and you're not always saying, "I know you didn't mean to," or "I know you're a good person." Sometimes you say, "I forgive you because I realize you actually are not a good person." So how am I going to be mad at you forever? I'm going to say, "You should have known better." When you don't, I'm going to expect you to have behaved better. When you didn't, didn't even have it in you, your heart is dark, and I'm going to be mad at you about that. I feel sad for you about that. I forgive you because I don't know what it even takes to build a person like that on the inside, and I'm so sorry that you were failed this way. You don't forgive them because it's okay. You forgive them because there's just no point even being mad. It won't even change anything. As a matter of fact, a lot of the times, people who have gone cold, your anger fuels them. You think it's funny, you're wasting your energy hating a person who gets fueled off of your anger. Like, they see it as power. It's the point. Either they love you and they don't want you to be mad, so put it down, or they don't care and they're happy you're mad, so put it down. In what world does it serve us to hold on to it?
So the goddess, and why she's so important here, why she's going to be your ally and everything, is the she's the one that whispers wisdom into your ear when you want to be a badass and you want to come in all guns blazing. She's the one who says, "Put it down." Because then you, you can pick up what you want. Like, if you imagine you've got these two hands, you can build whatever you want with. And you're going to go pick up the one thing you don't want to look at. You're going to go pick up the one thing you don't, you can't do anything about. You're going to go pick up the one thing you want to be away from. Got to put it down, because or else you carry it with you.
And the feeling of of being forgiven by the goddess was never a feeling of, "Ha, that means I can take advantage of you more." You didn't feel like a sucker. You think, "I'm going to be all mature now. You're so silly. I have so many more Shenanigans up my sleeve. I'm going to make you so upset, and you just forgave me. You're such a sucker." Think that. You think, "Wow, that was easy. I would have misbehaved again tomorrow." You just, it just felt right. And that's how people feel around you when you just let it be. You're not better than anybody else. You're just not willing to suffer forever to be right. If people really are sorry, then you forgive them. And if people really aren't sorry, you forgive them, then you can move on.
The deep sadness that is left after forgiving is what is called that you process your feelings. And that is what we're going to do in this pro, this program. And I've been speaking with Nicole, and she's going to be adding another healing piece. Actually, I'm going to speak to her after this. She's been considering maybe tomorrow morning. So we're going to let you know ASAP if there is another healing piece for you. I had a feeling after this module, the sooner the better. So we'll let you know exactly when. Right now, it's tentative for 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, but I'll double check with Nicole after this module to make sure she's ready and that that that's good for her.
Can you understand that if you do forgive them, what you're left with is your own feelings? If you don't forgive them, you don't have to deal with your own feelings. You get to deal just with the story. You never forgive them, you always have the story. You never forgive them, you always have the story. You never forgive them, you always have the story. The minute you forgive them, the story's gone. And all you're left with is your feelings. And this is the real truth of why we prefer not to forgive, because the story feels more manageable than the emotion. But when you're in your inner strength and you understand how to process your emotions, the story will never feel worth holding, because you'll know what to do with your feelings. And that is real freedom. I would much rather forgive you and deal with my feelings than hold on to you in a story forever, just so I don't have to deal with my anger, or my pain, or my rejection. So that's what's coming next in the program.
Yes, you know, forgiving yourself is the hardest. And that is why a lot of times you'll be like, "How can I forgive you when I haven't even forgiven me?" I love me way more than I love you, and I have never let myself off the hook. You think I'm going to say yes to your sorry? I'm afraid I've been paying for my own shortcomings for myself for 40 years. So it's going to be a hot minute before you get an okay from me. But if you can put your stuff down, I'll say, "If I can forgive me, I can forgive you."
So what I'm going to have you do is, before you have this beautiful healing process with Nicole, is I'm going to have you sit down and write some apology letters. But they're going to come from, they're not apology letters, forgiveness letters. They're going to come from a very different place than any other forgiveness letter you've ever written before. You're going to find in your heart all the people that you did not let yourself actually forgive. You forgave them for all the, the cool, trendy reasons. You forgave them because you thought it would help you. You forgave them because you felt bad not forgiving them. You forgave them because you thought you should. You forgave them because you didn't want to look like an unforgiving person. But you didn't forgive them because you let it go. And you know that. And I want you to go in there and journal and just freewrite, "I forgive you for real and let it go," with all the people you've kind of been holding on to it with.
Then you're going to do it with the people that you thought you shouldn't forgive, the unforgivable stuff. And I want you to look for an angle that's like, "Whatever on earth you were given that makes it that you believe that this behavior is okay, I forgive you for the everything you've lacked in this world, because I can't help you and I can't hate you enough to change you. So I'm going to have to forgive you for me, for you, for us." And the last piece of the puzzle, you're just going to look and see, is there any part of you that you still feel you need to forgive? And this will come up during the program quite a few times when I model a conversation you could have had with a parent or a child or a friend, and you're like, "Why didn't I say that? If I would have said that, I might not have broken the relationship. If I would have said that, I wouldn't have messed it up so hard." You're also going to need to forgive yourself for that. Nobody's perfect. And the only reason I'm able to speak like this is because of how many times I messed up. The only reason I know how to speak the way I speak now is because of the amount of times I didn't, and the contemplations I did in my own forgivenesses to know what I could have said, not what I should have said, but what I could have said. And now my communication is far different.
So take the time for this, not because you should, but because you're going to give yourself your life back. You're going to start clearing your nervous system from all the fear, all the things. And beyond that, if you're going to notice over time, you're going to stop imagining that people will never forgive you. We're so afraid to mess up with people because deep down we're afraid we'll mess things up forever. That's because we don't forgive. When we're a clear channel for forgiveness, we let ourselves love people a little bit more. We forgive ourselves for shortcomings a little bit more. Because if I can forgive you, you can forgive. And if you can forgive, I can forgive. If I never forgive you, and I imagine you're like me, then I can't make one mistake. It's unsafe for me to make one mistake.
This exercise is so extraordinary. It was so healing from another Melanie program. So grateful to have done this, and I still use it. But now this is a little different, Michelle, because the forgiveness is not just, "I forgive you." In the way I, we've done so many different forgiveness exercises in in the Alpha FM brand. But the difference with this forgiveness exercise, and why it's so powerful, is that you are forgiving the person because it has nothing to do with you processing your feelings. You're still left with all the feelings. You will not necessarily, you might feel lighter, but when you're done writing all of your forgivenesses, you may still feel sad. You may still feel mad. You may feel hurt. But you won't need it to be at them. You're going to be able to just have it be in your body, unattached to something. Like, I have sadness, but it's not attached to you now. I can let it go.
When we're mad at people, or when we're holding a grudge at people, they become the anchor for the feelings we have. So if I have anger, anger passes through me, but anger at you anchors the ship. I can have sadness, but sadness because of you anchors the ship. Sadness passes through me, but sadness because of you anchors the ship. When you let the person go, you let the the emotion flow. It doesn't need to stay. It only stays because you attach it to yourself through the person, the story, the whatever it is that you're going through. So that's the biggest difference in this scenario. You're really seeing it like, "I might still be left with my feelings. I am not doing this forgiveness exercise to feel better. I am not doing this forgiveness exercise so that you feel better. I am only doing this forgiveness exercise because I'm letting it go, and then I'll process my feelings."
In the same way, you might tell a person, "I, I forgive you, and now I need some space to process my feelings." Instead of, "Okay, I forgive you. What do we want for dinner?" Which is what we were taught forgiveness looks like. "If you really forgave me, you'd be able to be fine right now." No, I forgive you, and I love you, and I'm not angry with you anymore, but I'm sad, and I want some space to be by myself and cry. And in a few hours, I'll come downstairs, and we'll spend a beautiful evening together. But I need that time. You're going to give yourself the right to have that.
See what comes up. This does not need to be perfect. It might bring up all kinds of stuff. Don't worry about it. We've got you for all the kinds of stuff that it brings. You can't mess it up. This is your life. It's your heart. It's your body. It's your feelings. There is no right or wrong. There's just what happens. So you're safe. You're held. We love you. We've got you. We're not just going to leave you there with all these unprocessed feelings. There's a plan for what happens next. Just see if you can let the people go and the stories go. It's amazing how deep we need to go to really, really forgive sometimes. Really looking forward to doing this.
I have a lot of people to forgive that are not actually sorry for what they did. How does that get navigated? Well, if they're not sorry, why the heck would you keep punishing them? There's no point. You forgive them for being the kind of people who can't understand their impact. You forgive them for not understanding the love they had that they lost. You forgive them for their inability to to face their pain themselves. You know, you give someone, these people probably very low emotional intelligence and very high, very high agitation. What do we expect? They can't face themselves. They can't face that they did anything wrong. They can't face that they made a mistake. They can't face that they're sorry because that would mean that they messed up. They don't know how to handle that. They're probably way worse on themselves than anybody else's. So they would much rather not hear anything from you. No, no, no, no. "I did nothing wrong." Or else, "I need to face myself." This is what can you expect. I forgive you that you don't have it to be better, or that you don't think you do. I forgive you that your life is a trap. When I can be free, I forgive you for that. Like, I don't need you to be sorry for me to process these feelings. If you're not sorry, you're not sorry. I forgive. I forgive because it's not my job to decide who deserves that, but I deserve that. That I know.
Take this time. Be kind with yourself. Be soft with yourself. You can share in the group if you want. You can keep it close to your heart if you want. And we'll be emailing you and posting in the group for when Nicole's session is going to be. Thank you for your presence. I love you. You're beautiful. You smell nice. And I shall see you on the next module.
[Music]
She emerged from within [Music] me like a goddess from water. She filled her lungs with new air, with a sigh that meant everything: relief, rebirth, release. She took in the world around her with an understanding of its fragility and its strength. She let the waters of her past run down her face. She took on a new name. She took on a new way. She became whole. She lives in me. She saved me. She is me.